States Rights & National ID's

Jim Choate ravage at einstein.ssz.com
Wed Nov 28 14:38:58 PST 2001



It has been posited that the fed's would allow the states to form a
compact with respect to sharing data between states, basically because the
Republicans believe in states rights.

This doesn't hold water.

When one speaks of 'states rights' it references the ability of the state
to act autonamously and decide their own policies INTERNALLY; not to act
as a parallel federal agency. This is clearly not an internal issue. 
Further, a considerable percentage of Congress and the President have come
out (lukewarmly) against the idea.

When coupled with the growing concern over the abandonment by the
executive of current legal process (eg military trials for civilian
crimes) and the fact that Congress has not declared war the
Executive/Congress will find it harder in coming days to see 'eye to eye'.
This will make it even harder for an agreement to be reached.

[
 Personal prediction: Ashcroft will be history within 12-24 months. He
 will either step down because of a 'or else' situation or he will be
 found in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide the requested
 information and justification. The Executive is NOT the primary authority
 at the federal level, the Congress is. The Executive seems to have
 forgotten that.

 It would not surprise me if within 5-10 years we don't see a new
 Amendment better defining these relationships.

 Last nite on PBS there was a show where a congressman and an executive
 representative discussed the current situation. The congressman actually
 quoted the 6th. The reaction of the executive rep was stone faced silent
 anger. The congressman basically ripped him a new butthole. I only got
 to see about 10 minutes of it and I don't know the shows name.
]


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